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Secretary Henry Paulson came up with a $700 billion emergency plan to pour government money into the Wall Street firms to save them from collapsing – not to fund a bonus pool for the billionaire boys’ clubs of the investment banking firms. It is the economy that is supposed to be bailed out – like the millions of homeowners currently or soon to face foreclosure – not the bankers.

If Paulson does not stop the bailout companies, like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, from writing big bonus checks to their executives, those payments will make the future viability of the world’s best banking system as unstable as a portfolio of sub-prime mortgage derivatives. Stopping the big bonus bonanza would be the right thing to do – and Paulson must do it for five big reasons.

1. It is hypocritical. The Wall Street guys always rhapsodize about the perfection of the free market – until it stops showering them with money. Then people who are already in the top fraction of a percent of the wealthiest people in the world want to be “made whole” with billion-dollar welfare checks.

2. It is unfair. The only justification for multi-million-dollar pay packages is that they reward performance. That means that in a bad year what had gone up must come down.

3. It is infuriating. I’ve observed many financial scandals, from the savings and loan failures through Enron, WorldCom, and post-Sarbanes-Oxley messes like backdated options. All were recognized as tragic but not pervasive – compartmentalized as the corruption of a limited group of individuals.

But across the country, people see this mess as central to the operation of Wall Street and we are outraged at having to take money that would better be spent on education, the environment, paying down the debt – or lowering taxes – and spend it on making up for the greed and stupidity of a bunch of rich people trying to get richer.

4. It makes it easier for our competitors in global markets. The rest of the world has never really tried to compete with our investment banks, intimidated by their power, expertise, and reach. The current mess has opened up new opportunities for non-US financial institutions.

5. It is asking for trouble from Washington. I’d hate to be a politician who voted for the bailout and has to explain how this money got diverted from customers to bankers. If Wall Street cannot accept some responsibility for creating this problem, Congress and the regulatory agencies will be more than willing to step in to make them.

Nell Minow is the editor and co-founder of The Corporate Library, a corporate governance firm.